Saturday, 5 July 2008

Today I am taking my family to the cinema, a fairly mundane activity for a rainy July day in Manchester. However, there is a point I wish to make.

In my previous post, I grumbled about being ripped off by ticket agents. Today I will be ripped off by the cinema.

For some bizarre reason, I am not allowed to take food into the cinema, including sweets, drinks, sandwiches, ice cream – anything in fact. I know this because there are paper signs on the doors and scattered around the complex stating just that.

Why? The cinema is banning me from bringing my own food so that they can force me to purchase their offerings instead. And what delights have they got to offer us? Crap at a mad exorbitant cost.

Imagine if I went to the cinema alone and fancied watching the film munching a small bag of Minstrels and a tiny bottle of Tango. The stormtroopers at the cinema would not allow me to enter. So I would have to hand them over, like a naughty schoolchild and then queue up with everybody else, waiting to be served by useless employees who lack any interest and seen content to stand there in a coma while the queue builds up. When you finally manage to attract the attention of one of these people, the only choice you have as an individual is to purchase a huge bag of Minstrels that could feed 5000 people and a colossal bucket of Fanta orange that you could drown an elephant in; you have to hand over the deeds to your house to play for them.

Furthermore, if you manage to consume these products during the two hours of the film, you cannot get up because of the additional weight and the doubling of your girth.

Suffice it to say that I will be sneaking stuff in as if I am a common petty criminal. If I’m caught – there goes my house and my gut.